"0:-" wrote in message
ps.com...

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
"0:-" wrote in message
ps.com...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

If parents have completely unrealistic expectations, the
results can be tragic, especially if the parents feel like it's their
duty
to force their children to live up to their unrealistic expecations no
matter how harsh a punishment is required.

We are in agreement. And here in this newsgroup, aps, I have seen again
and again, pro spankers discuss circumstances where they would spank,
and demonstrating they have extremely unrealistic expectations of
children. The idea that any child, for instance, under the age of 12 or
so, would "willfully disobey." It's nonsense.

They are following natural imperatives to explore the universe. All an
aware parent needs to do is learn how to question and investigate and
when the parent has figured out (even if wrong) some probable natural
imperative the child is reacting to, simply show them how to get their
appropriately. Wanted behavior replacing unwanted behavior.

This isn't rocket science, and no child with parents that can figure
this out is "spanked." It's too damned obvious to a parent that can
think, and is compassionate (even in the absence of exact evidence)
that the child does not need spanking to learn.

My personal experience from when I was a child proves beyond any possible
doubt that you are wrong about this.

It appears we are off to a bad start.

Are you sure that your personal experience is not in conflict with
facts from other sources?

And the personal experience, in fact, should be the only arbiter of
'the truth?"

I'll take just a few more minutes to clear up some possible confusion. Your
central thesis here was, "The idea that any child, for instance, under the
age of 12 or so, would 'willfully disobey.' It's nonsense." I went ahead
and quoted your expansion on that theme before I started my reply, but it
should have been clear that the focus of my reply was on the age at which
children can willfully disobey.

I know I wasn't always a typical child growing up, or even all that close to
being one. But if I could make deliberate choices to do things I knew I'd
been told not to at age six, then either I was able to do it at HALF the age
of other children, or your claim is ridiculous. And I am not willing to
believe I was THAT different from other children, or that I radically
reinvented two separate memories for no good reason.

Any valid theoretical model has to account for the ENTIRE range of people's
personal experiences. If you were an honest, reasonably openminded searcher
for truth, your response to seeing persoanl experiences that clash with your
theoretical models would be to try to figure out what about your theoretical
models is - or at least might be - off target. But instead, you seem to
reject the personal experiences of anyone whose personal experiences don't
fit your theoretical models as being impossible just because they don't fit
your models.

When you see what you want to see and ignore or reject anything that doesn't
fit your prejudices, it doesn't matter if you have fifty years of experience
or even if you had five hundred years of experience. All the extra time
gave you was more time to have collected stories where people's personal
experiences support your biases while at the same time ignoring or rejecting
any stories of people's experiences that clash with your biases. And the
fact that you use your education and experience as an excuse to reject what
other people tell you from their personal experiences just makes it even
harder for you to see the entire truth.

As for your education, too much trust in education can be dangerous when it
leaves a person feeling like he already has all the answers, and like
anything in the real world that doesn't fit what he learned in school must
be wrong. When reality and education collide, a wise person will recognize
the collision as an indication that what he learned in school is, at the
very least, not the entire picture of the truth.

It's frustrating when a person of your intelligence and experience isn't
willing to listen and try to be genuinely objective. You know things that I
don't, and I have experiences that you could learn from, and putting those
together could help both of us develop a better understanding. But when you
refuse to genuinely listen, and refuse to accept any possibility that your
understanding of the world is less than complete, trying to discuss things
with you is mostly just a waste of time.

Hey, despite my education in the field and 50 years of examining this
and my experience throughout that time, much of it professional as well
as personal, I would not offer such a blanket statement as that.

There is always the possibility I've been wrong...why, back in 75 I can
recall that I was...well, that's a long story.

Want to start over?

Start with my statement you follow your claim with. Thanks.

Kane


Sometimes children simply decide that
something that they've been told not to do is enough fun that they want
to
do it anyhow. Granted, if parents take enough time, they can often find
a
way to redirect the children's choices by offering them something that's
almost as much fun, or maybe even more fun, that they wouldn't have to
feel
guilty about doing. But that doesn't mean the children's disobedience
isn't
willful.

When I read your claim, I started thinking back trying to find the first
occasions when I can be absolutely sure that I willfully disobeyed my
parents - where I knew I wasn't allowed to do something but made a
deliberate choice to do it anyhow. I can come up with two situations
when I
was no older than six, and possibly younger. (I know I couldn't have
been
older because we moved to a different house when I was six, but beyond
that,
I have no way of pinpointing my age.)

One situation involved playing with the shower curtain in a way that had
the
bottom of the curtain in the tub but had it draped over the side hanging
over the outside so my younger brother and I could put water in the part
of
the curtain where it sagged over the outside. (It's kind of hard to
explain.) My brother and I had been told repeatedly not to do it because
my
parents were afraid we'd break the shower curtain. But I couldn't figure
out how what we were doing could break it, and I knew I was being too
careful to spill water outside the tub, so I wasn't inclined to give up
my
fun and obey my parents. As it turned out, the shower curtain did break,
and my brother and I got in trouble. (The flaw in my reasoning was that
I
didn't even begin to comprehend that the place that would break was where
the curtain was held up by hooks through holes, far above my head. Now I
can recognize that the stress on the holes was vastly greater than the
stress on the part I was paying attention to as a little kid.)

The other early occasion I remember involved vitamin pills. We didn't
generally have candy around, but chewable vitamin pills tasted good, and
there were times when I snuck extra ones even though I knew I wasn't
supposed to.

I'll strongly agree that a lot of things young children do are caused by
things other than willful disobedience. Sometimes they don't even
understand that they are doing something wrong. Other times, they forget
about rules they are supposed to obey - especially if they get carried
away
with what they are doing. But the idea that children have to be around
age
12 before they are capable of making willful choices to disobey is
completely preposterous.